Blud and Magick

  120. Blud and Magick by Preston Norton.

This book read a bit like a mash-up of Harry Potter and Hex Hall: 14-year-old Darla Summer is a re-incarnation (of sorts) of the Shadow Lord Alrad Remmus--but she thinks she's a perfectly average teenage girl until the day she discovers that someone has stolen the body of her English teacher and that the two boys she's been assigned to work with are a warlock and a vampire. The discoveries multiply at this point, including her discovery that her beloved Uncle Edwin is really a Sage for the kingdom of Trivaesia and he is being summoned home--along with Darla, who is to attend the Alrad Academy of Blud and Magick, a school for paranormals of all sorts.

The story was fun: the writing style was light and fast and the teenagers had some pretty good back-and-forth exchanges. The high fantasy style of the first chapter threw me a little, because it was quite different from the style of the rest of the book. Darla herself also seemed a bit passive: lots of things happened to her, but she didn't really start acting until the end of the book.